Seven Days to Common Ground
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Kuchiki-taichou is acting weird.


**Title: **Seven Days to Common Ground**  
Universe:** Bleach**  
Theme/Topic: **N/A**  
Rating:** PG-13  
**Character/Pairing/s:** Renji, Kenpachi, Byakuya, Yachiru (appearances by Yamamoto and mentions of Mayuri)**  
Warnings/Spoilers:** None I can imagine, just the usual crack and OOC.**  
Word Count:** 3,310**  
Summary:** Kuchiki-taichou is acting weird.  
**Dedication: ** for sophiap's REALLY LATE birthday fic. I am on a roll this year orz. HAPPY BELATED, MY DEAR!  
**A/N:** This ended up WAY different than I thought it would when I started it. Also way longer, but I'm out of practice with Bleach, so I suppose this is just par for course.**  
Disclaimer:** Not mine, though I wish constantly.**  
Distribution:** Just lemme know.

* * *

**Monday**

On Monday, Kuchiki-taichou is the same Kuchiki-taichou as usual.

Renji smudges one of the kanji on his report earlier in the day and Kuchiki-taichou patiently makes him do the whole thing over. Renji eats senbei at his desk during the afternoon and Kuchiki-taichou calmly asks him sweep up the entire office after that. A normal day at the sixth division.

Once Renji is done with all of his work and ready to go home for the night, he stops in front of Kuchiki-taichou's office on his way out and sees that his captain's head still bent over his desk in the glow of the flickering candlelight, the sixth division leader working diligently away as the final rays of sunshine disappear over the horizon behind him. It's usually like this, every day.

"Going home now, taichou," Renji says, poking his head into the open doorway to let his captain know.

"Very well. I will see you tomorrow then, Renji," Kuchiki-taichou answers peacefully, pausing to look up from his paperwork so that he can bid his vice-captain a proper goodbye. It's little things like that about Kuchiki-taichou that makes Renji glad to be his vice-captain, even though Kuchiki-taichou's strictness does not allow for tiny smudges on the reports or rice cracker crumbs on the furniture. Renji grins and salutes on his way out, Kuchiki-taichou goes back to work, and everything is as normal as always in the sixth division that night.

Monday is the last time Renji can say that properly.

**Tuesday**

On Tuesday reports of a hazy nature make their way back to the gotei-13 about mysterious disappearances on the southeastern edges of Rukongai, all of which result in the mutilated bodies of young children and animals turning up in the riverbed days afterwards.

During the meeting, when Yamamoto-soutaichou asks for volunteers to head the investigation, Kuchiki-taichou and Zaraki-taichou raise their hands at exactly the same time.

Renji and the other vice-captains wince when they see those two particular hands simultaneously go up and very surreptitiously slip more into the shadows behind their respective captains (except for Yachiru of course, who only laughs and tugs on Zaraki's hair in delight).

"Sounds like a good fight, so I'll take this one, geezer," Zaraki tells the commander of the gotei-13 with a sneer, elbowing past Byakuya without seeing him.

Byakuya's eyes narrow. "It is an investigation," he clarifies reasonably, eyeing the eleventh division captain's back. "Not a brawl."

Zaraki motions to the gruesome pictures of lifeless children's eyes staring back at them from the projector screen. "Looks like a brawl to me, princess."

Byakuya sniffs. "It would," is all he says.

Yamamoto-soutaichou makes a raspy sound of discontent in the back of his throat. "You two certainly sound like children yourselves right now," he begins, the look in his eyes a thousand years more advanced than Byakuya's coldest, most disdainful expression could ever be. "Perhaps I shall send you together then."

Byakuya blinks, momentarily stunned. Then he collects himself, quickly. "Yes, commander," he says, head bowed.

Kenpachi just laughs. "Follow my lead and everything will be okay, princess."

On Tuesday, Kuchiki-taichou twitches at the sound of Zaraki's harsh laughter in his ear. It is uncharacteristic and almost imperceptible, and because he is standing directly behind Kuchiki-taichou, Renji is probably the only one who notices.

**Wednesday**

"It is unnecessary to use your vice-captain as bait," Kuchiki-taichou says the next afternoon, voice low and measured as they trek through the overgrown swamps of the southlands, looking for the cause of the murders.

Zaraki is not as concerned about being sneaky as Byakuya is; he hacks merrily away at the bits of foliage that don't immediately disintegrate under his reiatsu as they walk. "Why the hell not? You wanna use yours instead or something?" He stops for a moment, eyeing Renji up and down thoughtfully. "Maybe if we put him in a bonnet and give him a lollipop…"

Renji recoils.

"But I wanna play, Ken-chan!" Yachiru protests, throwing her hands up in the air like this is all going to be a grand and marvelous adventure. She tumbles off of Zaraki's shoulder in the process, but the large captain deftly catches her in the crook of the arm that's not busy murdering plant life with his zanpakutou.

Kuchiki-taichou doesn't seem to notice Yachiru's squeal and pleased giggles thereafter; Renji sees that Kuchiki-taichou is too busy clenching his teeth and sending icy looks at Zaraki's neck (because that's about the part that's eye-level with him). "This is not a game," he says.

Zaraki snorts. "Damn right," he responds, grinning, "It's better. It's a fight."

"It is an investigation," the sixth division captain says again, even though Renji is more inclined to agree with his former captain than his current one right now, when he thinks back on all those pictures they'd seen yesterday, of those lifeless babies with their guts ripped out.

"Seems more to me like whoever's doing this is calling us out," Zaraki says. "What's there to investigate? Find the fucker and kill him."

Renji feels his captain's reiatsu surge for a moment, uncharacteristically. It's there and gone again in a moment though, and part of Renji wonders if he'd just imagined it. "If you go about this carelessly, Zaraki," Kuchiki-taichou says, as reasonable as ever, "then the culprit may realize we are hunting him and go into hiding until it is safe again. More children will die if he is allowed to get away. Perhaps not right away, but afterwards, when he reemerges."

Zaraki turns to look over his shoulder at the smaller shinigami, his lone eye studying Byakuya long and hard. "Ain't no more kids gonna die," he says after a beat, sound irate. "Cuz I'm gonna kill this fucker. Don't worry your pretty little head over it."

And then Zaraki easily—almost gently— tips Yachiru back onto his shoulder before moving on.

On Wednesday, Renji sees Kuchiki-taichou stare after Zaraki Kenpachi's back in an odd way; if Renji had to label it, he'd say Kuchiki-taichou looked kind of perplexed.

**Thursday**

They break their makeshift camp in the woods the next day and continue towards their destination, upstream of the riverbed where the bodies had first washed ashore. It's where some of the local villagers had pointed them in the direction of, most of them crying old ladies and frantic young mothers, all begging the great and powerful shinigami-sama to please take care of whatever is happening before their children are taken from them too.

Right now, covered in swamp muck and bug bites, Renji thinks he is about ready to take Zaraki-taichou up on his offer from yesterday and don a friggin' bonnet if it will mean that the two captains will come to a consensus.

"What's easier'n lettin' Yachiru lure him out and then lettin' me smash at him until he don't move no more?" Zaraki asks.

"Putting your vice-captain in danger like that is risky and foolish," Byakuya insists.

"Just 'cuz she's a kid don't mean she's like other kids," Zaraki says, and plucks Yachiru off of his shoulder by her foot, dangling her in front of Byakuya like some sort of toy. "Look."

Yachiru giggles and waves. "Everythin's upside down!" she chirps.

Byakuya and Renji blink. Zaraki grumbles something unintelligible that Yachiru seems to understand perfectly before he tosses her back onto his back.

"Sides, reports said this thing takes somethin' what, every three days?"

"Seventy-eight hours," Byakuya specifies, while Renji is just sort of surprised Zaraki-taichou had bothered to look at the report at all.

"So we got 'til tomorrow. Would you rather we wait around and let the fucker take some other kid that can't defend himself or would you rather we gave that bastard some'a Yachiru?"

Byakuya's eye twitches, but he does consider it. Renji supposes Zaraki's proposal makes sense, in the long run. If there's something out in the world that wants to get at Yachiru's guts, at least Yachiru has a fair chance of getting its guts_ first_.

"What if," Kuchiki-taichou poses, after what feels like a very long time, "we cannot stop it before it harms her?"

Zaraki harrumphs as she climbs onto his head to take a nap. "Don't worry, Byakushi! Ken-chan doesn't like it when things come after me," she says, around a yawn.

"Shut up," Kenpachi tells her, looking perturbed at the implication.

But she's already fast asleep, perfectly content all curled up on his head and smashing his spikes down without a care in the world.

On Thursday, Renji has to blink and rub his eyes when he thinks he sees something vaguely like amusement flash briefly across Kuchiki-taichou's face.

**Friday**

Renji is trapped.

The black gooey stuff is pinning him to the ground and he can't move; it makes him feel strangely drowsy everywhere it touches him, climbing up along his torso towards his mouth.

The plan might have worked if the creature's abilities were something they had seen before, but it's like fighting oil, oil that makes copies of itself and spreads and spreads and spreads. The plan had been to leave Yachiru in the general area of where the disappearances had occurred, sitting by the water all adorable and helpless looking, while the three older shinigami spread out around her, prepared for an attack.

The thing had come out of the river itself eventually, and Zaraki-taichou had been right there with it as promised, quick as anything as he'd slammed his zanpakutou down on the ground, cutting off one of the thing's large, black limbs right before it could come in contact with the tip of Yachiru's big toe.

He'd proceeded to hack at it until it was a black, gooey mess, while Kuchiki-taichou had bound it with a kidou spell so it couldn't get back into the water and Renji had dragged Yachiru out of the way while she'd been too busy watching the carnage with bright, curious eyes.

Then, eventually, everything had gone quiet. Goo was splattered everywhere.

"Damn," Zaraki-taichou had said after a few minutes, wiping gunk from his blade. "That was lame."

Nearby a raven landed, and began pecking curiously at some of the juicier looking bits of gooey stuff.

Kuchiki-taichou had begun studying them as well, brow furrowed thoughtfully while Yachiru began chewing on Renji's head in boredom.

"Didn't know you liked lookin' at guts," Zaraki had commented to the smaller captain, casually.

Byakuya had frowned and ignored him, running a finger over some of the entrails that had landed on his captain's coat due to Zaraki's…enthusiasm. "It's odd," he'd started, examining the smell, "there's still reiatsu coming off of i…"

And that's when things got weird.

Renji remembers the goo giving a shudder and a shake then, before it started to spread, across everything that it had landed on, engulfing those things in a sinister purple glow.

"It's not dead, taichou!" Renji had shouted, and quickly shoved Yachiru off of him when the stuff pinned his legs to the floor.

And so here they are.

Renji watches in horror as some of the black stuff pours into the mouth of the raven that had been scavenging at it's bits just moments ago, choking the bird to death before filling its body to the point of bursting, the raven's blood and guts exploding out of its own torso and legs and eye sockets when the body can't hold any more goo.

"Don't let it get in your mouth, Yachiru!" Renji shouts, when he sees her dancing effortlessly by, chirping in excitement while she avoids tendrils of black gunk as they crash into each other trying to get to her. Renji shuts his own mouth when he realizes she probably doesn't need him to give her any advice, and tries to get his arm to move, to get Zabimaru loose enough to cut the rest of him free.

Meanwhile, the two captains try to fight the black stuff off by the water's edge, even though one of Kuchiki-taichou's legs has already been incapacitated and Zaraki-taichou's left arm has been swallowed in the slime.

"Now this is more like it!" Zaraki whoops, unmindful of his handicap. "I was hoping to have some more fun today."

"Just kill it," Byakuya tells him primly. "And keep your mouth closed, if possible."

"_You_ kill it. I'm busy," Zaraki bites back, mouth wide open in an enthused grin.

"We are that which cannot be killed, foolish shinigami," a voice that sounds like a thousand voices whispers then, coming from all around them. "We are that which multiplies infinitely, that which feeds upon the very energy of your souls. We are immortal."

"Tch. If you need to eat, that means you can die," Zaraki grunts at the voice, as Kuchiki-taichou burns through a section of the goo with a light spell.

"There is always food; everything has a soul, an energy," the voices hiss.

"Then why children," Byakuya asks before he can help himself, captain's coat doing a fair impression of Zaraki's as the black bits eat through it around his calves.

The voices laugh. "Well. Some lives are just tastier than others."

A huge wall of gunk flies towards Yachiru then, crashing into the tree behind her as she slips into shunpo to avoid it. "Some," the creatures insist, "are more pure."

"Find a way to retreat with Renji and Yachiru," Byakuya instructs Kenpachi eventually, when he sees that the odds aren't in their favor. "I will create a diversion." He extends his hand, preparing for what can only be the mother of all kidou spells he has in his extensive arsenal.

But Zaraki ignores him.

"Gonna have fun killing you," Kenpachi snorts to the monster, even though he can't move anymore, both legs buried in gunk.

"We have already said we cannot die!"

Zaraki grins. "So long as you've got the energy, right?"

"Zaraki-taichou, retreat!" the sixth division captain instructs him again.

Zaraki just laughs and stops hacking, letting the black bits climb all the way up his legs, wind around his torso, cover his shoulders.

"Zaraki!" Byakuya shouts, and Renji thinks he actually sounds like he's genuinely angry now. "Listen to…"

An explosion of angry yellow light cuts everyone off. It burns a hole through the wave of black gunk threatening to wash over Kenpachi's head, and it makes Renji's blood run cold in his veins, makes it even more impossible to move than before.

He feels his grip slacken on Zabimaru.

Renji knows this feeling, this whisper of death in your veins.

It can only mean one thing.

"Yes," the voices say, confirming the redhead's fears as the gunk begins gathering around Zaraki's trapped body, absorbing his overflowing energy. "Yesss…"

Zaraki laughs. "Come and get me!" he shouts, facing the rolling wave of blackness straight on.

Byakuya looks incredulous as the events unfold in front of him; it's just another one of those uncharacteristic things Renji's been seeing from his captain over the past few days.

"We will take your power for ourselves and grow large enough to destroy this land!" the voices sing, humming with the murderous energy of Zaraki's reiatsu.

Byakuya darts forward, hand extended as the monster prepares to completely engulf Zaraki's still cackling head.

But it's too late.

The monster screams.

**Saturday**

On Saturday, Renji can move again, but it is very, very difficult.

Kuchiki-taichou is fine, of course, and Yachiru seems fine too. Zaraki seems out of spirits but otherwise unharmed as the four of them trudge glumly through the desert heat, because what Zaraki-taichou did the other day means they have to take the long way back, avoiding all the inhabited bits of Rukongai so that he doesn't melt any people or major structures along the way.

"This is boring," Zaraki mutters, Yachiru asleep on his head like the incapacitating waves of reiatsu pouring off of him in buckets are nothing more than a warm, familiar blanket. She is the only one out of the four of them who is perfectly intact somehow, from the edges of her sandals all the way to the pink curls of hair.

Renji struggles to put one foot in front of the other in his ragged, half-eaten uniform, while Kuchiki taichou—having long ago shed his disintegrated captain's coat— examines the glass vial of black goo he'd collected back by the riverbank. The faint screams of the monster inside of it ping the shinigami's ears every now and again, as it struggles to break out of its glass prison.

Also inside the container is Kenpachi's eye patch, eating merrily away after having been introduced to a new and different food source that is almost as abundant in reiatsu as Zaraki himself. Apparently variety really is the spice of life, if the contented noises it is making are any indication. To Renji, it is all just incredibly creepy.

"The twelfth division might be able to make sense of where and how this creature came to be," Kuchiki-taichou had explained briefly, when he'd bent down to collect the remaining goop yesterday afternoon.

Zaraki just snorts as Byakuya continues to examine the sample today, in the harsh desert sun. "Keepin' somethin' like that around Kuro-kooky just seems like a bad idea to me," he says, and voices Renji's exact thoughts on the matter.

"Indeed," Byakuya agrees, surprising everyone when he does. "However, we must learn from this incident in whatever manner we can."

Zaraki laughs, derisively. "How damned sensible of you, princess."

Byakuya eyes him in return, and in that moment, seems pleased to have discovered something over the course of the last five days. "You seem rather sensible yourself, Zaraki. How odd."

Kenpachi sputters. Renji does too, except it hurts him more to do it. "The hell's that supposed to mean?" the eleventh division captain demands.

Byakuya shakes the vial, causing the goo to shriek indignantly and the eye patch to burble in maniacal contentment. "I never would have imagined you to be a fighter who listens to what his opponent is saying."

Zaraki just grunts, looking vaguely embarrassed. "It's not my fault you ain't got any imagination."

Byakuya simply tucks the vial into his sleeve. And smirks.

Kuchiki-taichou _smirks_.

At that point, Renji's knees finally give out and he hits the ground, face first. Luckily the sand is there, to cushion the blow.

**Sunday**

On Sunday, Renji thinks Kuchiki-taichou seems different, somehow. The day begins as normal as ever; Renji uses the wrong kanji in one of his reports and Kuchiki-taichou asks him ink the whole thing all over again. Renji spills some wasabi peas on the floor and Kuchiki-taichou simply suggests that it needs to be swept and mopped again anyway, as it has nearly been a week since they'd last cleaned. It's a typical enough start to the day for the sixth division.

But somehow, it just _feels_ different.

It isn't until late that afternoon—when Yamamoto-soutaichou calls another emergency meeting— that Renji realizes why.

According to some hazy border patrol reports that came in just this morning, something in the northern forests is making entire villages disappear, over night.

"Who wishes to investigate?" the commander of the gotei-13 asks, eyeing the line of captains and vice-captains presented before him.

Two hands go up, at exactly the same time.

The vice-captains (with the exception of Yachiru) all surreptitiously slip further behind their captains in response. Yamamoto sighs.

"Just follow my lead, princess," Zaraki tells Byakuya around a grin, and actually sees the smaller captain this time.

Kuchiki-taichou sniffs. "Do you even know which direction north is?" he asks calmly in response, and makes some of the other captains blink—was that a joke?— when they hear.

Zaraki just laughs, and Renji thinks the look in Kuchiki-taichou's eyes right now is his equivalent.

On Sunday, Renji decides that Kuchiki-taichou is acting weird.

He realizes he'll have to get used to it.

**END**


End file.
